Thomas Pfau’s study of images and visual experience is a tour de
force linking Platonic metaphysics to modern phenomenology and
probing literary, philosophical, and theological accounts of visual
experience from Plato to Rilke. Incomprehensible Certainty presents
a sustained reflection on the nature of images and the
phenomenology of visual experience. Taking the “image” (eikōn)
as the essential medium of art and literature and as foundational
for the intuitive ways in which we make contact with our
“lifeworld,” Thomas Pfau draws in equal measure on Platonic
metaphysics and modern phenomenology to advance a series of
interlocking claims. First, Pfau shows that, beginning with
Plato’s later dialogues, being and appearance came to be
understood as ontologically distinct from (but no longer opposed
to) one another. Second, in contrast to the idol that is typically
gazed at and visually consumed as an object of desire, this study
positions the image as a medium whose intrinsic abundance and
excess reveal to us its metaphysical function—namely, as the
visible analogue of an invisible, numinous reality. Finally, the
interpretations unfolded in this book (from Plato, Plotinus,
Pseudo-Dionysius, John Damascene via Bernard of Clairvaux,
Bonaventure, Julian of Norwich, and Nicholas of Cusa to modern
writers and artists such as Goethe, Ruskin, Turner, Hopkins,
Cézanne, and Rilke) affirm the essential complementarity of image
and word, visual intuition and hermeneutic practice, in theology,
philosophy, and literature. Like Pfau’s previous book, Minding
the Modern, Incomprehensible Certainty is a major work. With over
fifty illustrations, the book will interest students and scholars
of philosophy, theology, literature, and art history.
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